How rentable is Dragon?

[Iskandar Abdullayev]

Dragon owners, how rentable is Dragon? Do clients line up to book it? I need to put at least 10 weeks a year in the business plan to justify its purchase vs Alexa.
Thank you!

 

[Stephen Williams]

Dragon owners, how rentable is Dragon? Do clients line up to book it? I need to put at least 10 weeks a year in the business plan to justify its purchase vs Alexa.
Thank you!

All depends on your client base........By the time you get one it will be quite a common camera.

 

[Justin O'Neill]

I would look at it more from the angle of how rentable the MX will be in a month or two. I tried leaving one of my RED One cameras on the original Mysterium sensor and it almost never rented out as soon as there were a bunch of MXs out there. As soon as Dragon becomes the norm the MX is going to be very difficult to rent out. You may get lucky and have a client or two who don't care but in general everyone is going to want Dragon.

 

[Zeb B]

Dragon owners, how rentable is Dragon? Do clients line up to book it? I need to put at least 10 weeks a year in the business plan to justify its purchase vs Alexa.
Thank you!

Like anything - it's highly regional since it's based on supply and demand. Only your own personal research can answer your question.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Dragon is a better camera when compared to Alexa C300 etc. than Epic MX was making that same choice between camera possibilities

Total number of Dragons likely to be about the same (maybe a few less) than current crop of Epic MX cameras, per market. Lots of people have given up on owning/operating their own cams at this stage, and those most likely to have gone out of business are those who were charging the lowest prices, so market will get a bit better. Also, those who charged bottom rates are unlikely to be able to afford Dragon upgrade.

So look at how much Epic MX rents now, and for how much, and add a better situation, because a Dragon is simply a better camera, and the other competing offerings have not really improved and then you get you answer.

Turns out "game changer" BM 4K camera has mediocre image quality (those who can't see this should get their eyesight checked) so that is not a competitor, really, and c300/c500 have their place but really it's between F55, Alexa and Dragon, and for now Dragon image quality is just plain better (whereas MX had less latitude, less precise color that needed more grading etc. than Alexa) Some people will still choose Alexa regardless, and sometimes f55 global shutter is very important, but at least now it's a good fight that Dragon will be able to win much more often.

 

[Brian Merlen]

My MX is still doing okay now, not sure for how long though, but since I am upgrading it doesn't really matter anyway.. but the fact its going out still is kinda nice and the longer it takes the upgrade program the more I can milk it, so I really don't mind the wait at all actually

 

[Noah Yuan-Vogel]

Turns out "game changer" BM 4K camera has mediocre image quality (those who can't see this should get their eyesight checked) so that is not a competitor, really, and c300/c500 have their place but really it's between F55, Alexa and Dragon, and for now Dragon image quality is just plain better (whereas MX had less latitude, less precise color that needed more grading etc. than Alexa) Some people will still choose Alexa regardless, and sometimes f55 global shutter is very important, but at least now it's a good fight that Dragon will be able to win much more often.

What in you opinion is wrong with the bmpc 4k? I was surprised to see DR and sensitivity seemed comparable with MX. You don't think its a strong scarlet alternative?

 

[Joachim Hoge]

My MX is still doing okay now, not sure for how long though, but since I am upgrading it doesn't really matter anyway.. but the fact its going out still is kinda nice and the longer it takes the upgrade program the more I can milk it, so I really don't mind the wait at all actually

Have to agree with this

 

[Wil Wong]

I predict a few years of interest still. If anything, the MX will start eating into the Scarlet's clientele (those renters that wanna play with the toys but have little budget).

I think Dragon will cost more to rent from the beginning and eventually lower to the current Epic prices (but probably still a few years from now).

Demand may lessen for high end renters that rather have Dragon over MX but the low end users will stay the same if not increase (as they move up from Scarlets and using DSLRs to MX). Just my opinion.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I have relied on word of mouth, and I don't even really have a big network of people I know but my Epic upgrade paid itself off in about 8 months, twice as fast as my lower priced Scarlet--just because I missed out on so many rentals. Like Justin said though, if you have an Epic you might as well assume you have to upgrade. You'll lose more rentals to Dragon than the cost of upgrading in very short order. I don't expect any more rentals than I currently get with MX, I just expect to not lose everyone who will move over to a Dragon option if available.

Also the sooner you upgrade the better. The Dragon upgrade isn't going to drop in price. The longer you don't have it, the less time it has to pay itself off unless you plan on waiting 2-3 years for the next available upgrade in 2016-2017+

 

[Elsie N]

When making your decision, take into consideration that Dragon is not only a better camera, but is accompanied by image enhancing workflow such as A.D.D. in Redcine X Pro, and presumably in the SDK for employment in other NLEs.

 

[Clayton Burkhart]

I am not so sure there will be the kind of overwhelming response to Dragon that some are hoping for.
The reality is that RED is known to most commercial clients based on hype.
The DP's know the difference and maybe a couple of art directors, but most clients are often happy that the side of the camera just says RED or ALEXA.
Truth is there is not that much visually to differentiate an Epic MX from a Dragon body.
And let's face it, in an image making world, most of the taste makers are not DP's, but rather AD's who are pretty superficial when it comes to our technique.
I think Scarlet might lose over time with this next generation of sensor, but not because of DR differences, more likely because of it's lack of high frame rates and having to crop to arrive at them. If there ever was a group of folks who need to upgrade to Dragon, it's those folks, not the Epic owners.

 

[BigLu]

Hi Iskandar,

I comunicate with, work , spend time and hang out with DRAGON owners on a daily basis.
Theres something like 25 Dragons in my circle of friends.
People like Tonaci, Casey, Ivan, Justin, Evin, Fury, Phill, Collister, Vlad, just to name a few, I also have 2 myself.
That is not including rental houses like OffHollywood out of N.Y. whom I learn so much from Mark Pederson its astounding what he does and knows about these cameras.

The simple answer is VERY RENTABLE. If that answers your question Great..
If not here is how you can approach your Dragon purchase.

The common denominator is everyone is striving to understand and GRAPPLE the Beast.

It does have alot to do with your client base, how you reach your clients, what kind of not just gear support you offer but what kind of POST support do you offer and or atleast educate your clients.
Do you have Glass, do you have, accessories, do you have a useful hand held rig, heres a biggie. Do you have a REDROCKET X?
Everyone I know whom has a Dragon takes the time to really dive in and become as educated as possible on what the camera does, can do and the post solutions out there accompanied with it.

As the technology in these cameras is constantly improving.
RED GOES HARDCORE at this.
It is relentless that they just keep getting better and better every year every 1/2 year and sometimes even month to month.
and coming up with sometimes new features, or new software advancements, perhaps new support from 3rd party manufactures, sometimes new breakthrews in software, and other times flat out new improvements in hardware.

This is a constant learning exercise and re-educating your clients.
The proof is in the experience.
Get the camera in your hands, get it into your clients hands and it will do the rest.
If your up for all that then you can look forward to success with your Dragon.

I hope that helps
Best to ya.
Luis

 

[Michael Hastings]

What in you opinion is wrong with the bmpc 4k? I was surprised to see DR and sensitivity seemed comparable with MX. You don't think its a strong scarlet alternative?

Rob has taken it upon himself to be the prime basher of the BMP4K on reduser even though other redusers seem to like it. I have just received two and so far I'm impressed with a lot of things about it besides just the cost. I haven't had enough time to evaluate rob's opinion that the lack of OLPF renders human faces virtually unwatchable, but I feel like he's exaggerating a bit. I think it is a very strong contender vs. scarlet.

In my mind if one is in a budget mode where scarlet made sense, that now the BMP4K is a much better overall value given the low cost of memory, power, rigging etc. because for the same overall budget you could put together a better overall system - i.e. with tripod, lights, computer, etc. To me the only user where a scarlet makes sense is if you already own an epic and need a matching second camera but wouldn't normally need two high speed cameras.

I believe that if RED wants to compete in the relatively low priced segment it has to do something to increase the bang for buck ratio of the scarlet or offer a new product with greater bang for buck. However, I think that for the most part they have surrendered the sub-5K market.

A lot of RED's structure is based on proprietary components i.e.: RED RAW only; RED SSDs only; RED modules only, etc. and while that has its advantages it makes it very hard to compete once the rest of the world almost catches up to what you are doing with off the shelf mass produced sensors, off the shelf mass produced processing components (BMD has been making digitizers, transcoders, SSD recorders, etc. in volume for years), off the shelf mass produced SSDs - even the 'approved' SSDs for the BMD cameras are only $159 for a 240 gig ($1.50 per gig) vs. $2500 for the 256 REDMAG (~$10 per gig). Of course you can move to the minimags and cut that to $4.75 per gig as long as you are willing to buy a new $1500 side module and abandon your old cards. (I'm still trying to figure how that fits into 'obsolescence obsolete'.) It seems to me the market that is willing to pay that much of a premium to get marginally better quality is going to continue to shrink.

As far as renting, the rental market is dramatically influenced by the cost of ownership and the number of appropriate cameras available in the marketplace. As far as I can tell the market is already saturated with Epics and combine that with the ability to buy 4K cameras for the price of a week's rental of an epic there will be further erosion of potential rentals. All of the things BigLu said are important and viable - to a small sector of the production community, and the people he mentioned are already working with that segment. However, the vast majority of clients that most owner/operators or small rental houses have do not have the time or budget (or often even the need) for all of those things.

If you have rental clients now and/or the type of business that is adding rental clients then you will be able to rent Dragon as well, but if you expect to have rentals fall in your lap just because you have a dragon camera (as happened in the early days of REDONE and Epic) I think those days are gone.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

What in you opinion is wrong with the bmpc 4k? I was surprised to see DR and sensitivity seemed comparable with MX. You don't think its a strong scarlet alternative?

Harsh highlight clipping, no OLPF means all skin defects on all talent look worse than real life (which compounded with clippy whites makes skin look both greasy and wrinkly - BAD), very low sensitivity, nowhere near dynamic range of MX - at least 2-3 stops less and clip to white is very hard, so maybe even worse than that), mediocre 4:2:2 codec means color grading is nowhere near as potentially powerful as with R3Ds, backfocus cannot be adjusted, sound is terrible, no histograms or other normal professional tools for exposure. No comparison to Scarlet unless you have serious eyesight issues and so do all your clients.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Rob has taken it upon himself to be the prime basher of the BMP4K on reduser even though other redusers seem to like it. I have just received two and so far I'm impressed with a lot of things about it besides just the cost. I haven't had enough time to evaluate rob's opinion that the lack of OLPF renders human faces virtually unwatchable, but I feel like he's exaggerating a bit. I think it is a very strong contender vs. scarlet.

In my mind if one is in a budget mode where scarlet made sense, that now the BMP4K is a much better overall value given the low cost of memory, power, rigging etc. because for the same overall budget you could put together a better overall system - i.e. with tripod, lights, computer, etc. To me the only user where a scarlet makes sense is if you already own an epic and need a matching second camera but wouldn't normally need two high speed cameras.

I believe that if RED wants to compete in the relatively low priced segment it has to do something to increase the bang for buck ratio of the scarlet or offer a new product with greater bang for buck. However, I think that for the most part they have surrendered the sub-5K market.

A lot of RED's structure is based on proprietary components i.e.: RED RAW only; RED SSDs only; RED modules only, etc. and while that has its advantages it makes it very hard to compete once the rest of the world almost catches up to what you are doing with off the shelf mass produced sensors, off the shelf mass produced processing components (BMD has been making digitizers, transcoders, SSD recorders, etc. in volume for years), off the shelf mass produced SSDs - even the 'approved' SSDs for the BMD cameras are only $159 for a 240 gig ($1.50 per gig) vs. $2500 for the 256 REDMAG (~$10 per gig). Of course you can move to the minimags and cut that to $4.75 per gig as long as you are willing to buy a new $1500 side module and abandon your old cards. (I'm still trying to figure how that fits into 'obsolescence obsolete'.) It seems to me the market that is willing to pay that much of a premium to get marginally better quality is going to continue to shrink.

As far as renting, the rental market is dramatically influenced by the cost of ownership and the number of appropriate cameras available in the marketplace. As far as I can tell the market is already saturated with Epics and combine that with the ability to buy 4K cameras for the price of a week's rental of an epic there will be further erosion of potential rentals. All of the things BigLu said are important and viable - to a small sector of the production community, and the people he mentioned are already working with that segment. However, the vast majority of clients that most owner/operators or small rental houses have do not have the time or budget (or often even the need) for all of those things.

If you have rental clients now and/or the type of business that is adding rental clients then you will be able to rent Dragon as well, but if you expect to have rentals fall in your lap just because you have a dragon camera (as happened in the early days of REDONE and Epic) I think those days are gone.

Every time some cheap new camera comes out some clients wonder why they should continue to pay for things like Epic and Alexa when they can get something for $5 a day from some desperate BM owner that has "the same specs". I am merely pointing out at $40 000 (or so) for an Epic Dragon and $3K for BM - these are both reasonable price points as BM cameras have many serious deficiencies, and the extra you pay for Dragon is worth it to get away from these serious problems, and get a lot of other benefits along the way. BM cameras are not bad value for what they charge, and great student cams - but when you allow yourself to see the image flaws, you realize that $3K is a very good, but not actually a crazy-good price.

I'm not out to bash anyone - I'm out to help clarify differences so that all of you can more easily describe them to clients. "My BM is as good as your Red" is just misinformation - and there is a ton of that on the Internet. "My f55/Alexa/F35 is as good as your Red" is a more reasonable claim, endlessly debatable, but not ludicrous like the BM one.

I personally would not wish to have a career doing shot after shot with artifacts and deficiencies , aiming squarely for a 100% low-end market, so I have no interest in owning BM camera gear. if I were still a student I would be drooling over one (probably the 2K older model more so, because the 4K looks way worse in every test I have done and seen). I would be grateful to BM for access to such a great camera that I could save up for from beer money. When I was at University, we shot a lot of stuff on SD DV.

Here in Montreal endless bad experiences and nasty surprises in post with every low-end cam out there, from DSLRs to BM, have taught smart producers that putting your entire production at risk by trying to save $750 on camera rentals is plain old stupid "penny wise, pound foolish" behavior. Even the less smart ones are starting to get the memo, and even on low-ish budgets like $10 000 music videos.

I never said it would be easy to rent a Dragon, only that it will be somewhat easier than it was to rent Epic MX, for the reasons I mentioned. I also agree with what Lu says - he gets it.

I don't live in a communist society (and I'm glad). If you have more money in your production budget, you get to use better tools, and they really are better in meaningful ways, no matter what those in a situation to only be able to afford lesser tools tell themselves (I've been in that situation, I know from experience how the psychology works). I don't see what the problem is with that. It would be a problem if higher priced cameras were more expensive for no reason.

 

[Michael Hastings]

Harsh highlight clipping, no OLPF means all skin defects on all talent look worse than real life (which compounded with clippy whites makes skin look both greasy and wrinkly - BAD), very low sensitivity, nowhere near dynamic range of MX - at least 2-3 stops less and clip to white is very hard, so maybe even worse than that), mediocre 4:2:2 codec means color grading is nowhere near as potentially powerful as with R3Ds, backfocus cannot be adjusted, sound is terrible, no histograms or other normal professional tools for exposure. No comparison to Scarlet unless you have serious eyesight issues and so do all your clients.

Rob you know raw is coming - and it is nice to have the option of shooting ProRes and DNXHD - something RED doesn't seem to be willing to give us.

I agree back focus adjustability is somewhat of an issue, but probably not so much for most users that eye focus, like me, Steve Gibby and thousands of other users whether they use Red cameras or others. Sound is somewhat of an issue, but I find the mini plug sound inputs on Epic extremely unprofessional as well. And I will say for a few productions with the BMCC 2.5K the built in scratch mic (something epic lacks) made it easy to sync the double system sound.

There is certainly room for improvement in several areas, including sound - but if IIRC my Redone didn't even record sound when it was delivered - took several firmware updates to get there even though I paid over $20K for it.

And the original Redone didn't have adjustable back focus either - they recalled them and made an adjustable mount (which created other problems) presumably because of the complaints that the camera sensor distances were so inconsistent. Maybe Canon, Nikon, Hasselblad, Arriflex, and possibly BMD are better able to provide consistent back focus since none of them have back focus adjustment either.

AS far as histograms and other exposure tools, are you even aware that the 2.5K and 4K come not only with a full version of resolve but a Ultrascope as well which turns your laptop into up to six scopes, waveform, vector, RGB parade, histogram, audio scope and level meters for phase and levels, as well as a regular video monitor?

Can you show some demonstration of how with decent looking talent and decent lighting that the skin is so bad rather than just stating that as fact?

 

[Mike Garrick]

There are already so many Epics out there, one has to assume that they will all go Dragon. SO, how much a day more for Dragon, $500 more, $200 more , $50 bucks or the same price as those Epics are renting for right now ?

IMO The days of renting gear & profiting are drawing to a close ( unless you're a big player ).

So its simple dont base your math on rentals, base it on the old adage, use it or loose it.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Rob you know raw is coming - and it is nice to have the option of shooting ProRes and DNXHD - something RED doesn't seem to be willing to give us.

I agree back focus adjustability is somewhat of an issue, but probably not so much for most users that eye focus, like me, Steve Gibby and thousands of other users whether they use Red cameras or others. Sound is somewhat of an issue, but I find the mini plug sound inputs on Epic extremely unprofessional as well. And I will say for a few productions with the BMCC 2.5K the built in scratch mic (something epic lacks) made it easy to sync the double system sound.

There is certainly room for improvement in several areas, including sound - but if IIRC my Redone didn't even record sound when it was delivered - took several firmware updates to get there even though I paid over $20K for it.

And the original Redone didn't have adjustable back focus either - they recalled them and made an adjustable mount (which created other problems) presumably because of the complaints that the camera sensor distances were so inconsistent. Maybe Canon, Nikon, Hasselblad, Arriflex, and possibly BMD are better able to provide consistent back focus since none of them have back focus adjustment either.

AS far as histograms and other exposure tools, are you even aware that the 2.5K and 4K come not only with a full version of resolve but a Ultrascope as well which turns your laptop into up to six scopes, waveform, vector, RGB parade, histogram, audio scope and level meters for phase and levels, as well as a regular video monitor?

Can you show some demonstration of how with decent looking talent and decent lighting that the skin is so bad rather than just stating that as fact?

Backfocus is an issue because your focus fall-off does not behave properly and breathing becomes more pronounced- it has nothing to do with focussing by eye or not (well, to me it's not the important thing) - and 4K RAW, uncompressed, will create ludicrous file sizes.

You can't monitor the histogram of RAW using an external scope by definition - its in the video output chain so tells you little about RAW recording. Plus I don't cherish having to tether my cam every time I want to check scopes - that would be really, really annoying on Steadiacm or while doing scenic b-rolls with a tiny crew. It would generally waste a lot of set time for no good reason.

If you want an example of why I don;t think the new BM 4K is all that useable look here. https://vimeo.com/86892302


That poor girl looks way worse under BM cam than Epic (and Scarlet would also look great) same girl, same light ,same everything. What a difference a camera makes. The clouds also hard-clip - but clippy clouds I can live with, making talent look bad I cannot.

No OLPF + harsh clip = wrinkly, greasy looking skin - which you can see form the Epic shots is a distortion of reality - she's a very pretty girl. I would never accept to shoot humans with this camera. Anyone who thinks it doesn't matter which camera you use needs to see an eye doctor pronto.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

There are already so many Epics out there, one has to assume that they will all go Dragon. SO, how much a day more for Dragon, $500 more, $200 more , $50 bucks or the same price as those Epics are renting for right now ?

IMO The days of renting gear & profiting are drawing to a close ( unless you're a big player ).

So its simple dont base your math on rentals, base it on the old adage, use it or loose it.

I aim to break even vs renting for our own projects. On Epic, not quite yet, as so many times Alexa is requested/demanded. But Dragon seems to be is changing that somewhat from what I can intuit so far. External demand for Epic MX in Montreal is almost non-existent. Many Epic owners I have spoken to are throwing in the towel, and lost so much money on their Epics they can't afford Dragon anyway - so there will be less competition, at least in Montreal.

To the question if I spend 10K now will I get 10K more rentals over 1.5 years the answer is much, much more likely than not yes, because otherwise our Epic will never rent again after Dragon becomes more common, as even our own clients will probably not let us use it anymore as an A cam.